When a senior official at the U.S. Justice Department announced last week that the federal government would bring its use of private prison facilities to an end, she didn’t mince words in describing the department’s findings regarding these prisons.

“They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs,” said Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, “and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security.”

Pretty damning for prisons that have become popular with federal and state governments by promising exactly the opposite. And particularly troubling for Hawaii, which earlier this month signed a three-year contract with Corrections Corporation of America, the nation’s largest for-profit prison business, to house as many as 1,926 prisoners in Arizona for $45 million a year.

That deal, which can be extended by up to two years, essentially continued a previous contract with CCA signed in 2011. In fact, by the time the new contract ultimately expires, Hawaii may have been sending prisoners to CCA facilities on the mainland for as long as 21 years.

When we began this practice, it was only intended to be a short-term “solution to chronic overcrowding.” But it didn’t work out that way. As Civil Beat’s Rui Kenaya has reported in ongoing coverage of Hawaii’s prison system, when the state’s prison contracts went out for competitive bid in 2011 and again this year, CCA was the sole bidder.

Under CCA, Hawaii’s experience with private, for-profit prisons has led to some of the same criticisms voiced by Department of Justice officials.

For instance, the CCA contract only allows Hawaii to collect monetary damages for failure to staff mandatory posts, failure to allow an inmate into a substance abuse program within 30 days of compliance or failure to comply with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.

Without contractual incentives to honor all terms of the deal, vendors are often tempted to cut corners, which in the case of private prisons can have an impact on safety and security as well as the general level of service the contract requires.

While the CCA deal is often billed as a money-saver for Hawaii taxpayers, it’s not possible to tell whether that’s actually true. Neither the Hawaii Department of Public Safety nor any other state government entity maintains a comprehensive list of charges or a total of all costs related to the contract. Expenses such as transporting prisoners from Hawaii to the Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona are not included in the contract, for instance, but are nevertheless a cost of doing business with CCA.

The High Costs Of Replacing The OCCC

What this all boils down to is this: Deputy Attorney General Yates’ criticisms of private prisons used by the federal government might be appropriately aimed at Hawaii’s prisons partner, too.

Hawaii had a chance to push for more stringent contract conditions this year, following the request for proposals it released in early March for prison facilities and services.

It’s unclear whether it took advantage of that opportunity. Responses to the RFP had to be submitted by March 31, with the existing contract set to expire only three months later. At the end of June, the Department of Public Safety asked for a contract extension of 31 days or less, even though it could have requested a six-month extension.

The deal was done by late July.

Hawaii has scant short-term options in responding to this changing environment around for-profit prisons.

Why? To begin with, legislators have kicked the can down the road for years with regard to the 100-year-old Oahu Community Correctional Center. Even though the governor said of the facility in his state-of-the-state address at the beginning of the year, “The jail is severely overcrowded and in disrepair, and we must take action,” legislators balked at Ige’s proposal to fund a new facility with a major bond sale. They pegged the actual cost of a new facility at about $650 million, far above the estimate put forward by the governor.

Lawmakers instead set aside $55 million to expand three jails on neighbor islands and plan a replacement for the Maui Community Correctional Center. OCCC got $4 million for maintenance and $5.4 million for a study to find an appropriate location for a replacement correctional center.

Lawmakers also passed a resolution authorizing creation of a special task force to study incarceration policies in other states and report back to the Legislature before the 2017 session.

While that study is moving forward, it’s incumbent on the Ige administration to look deeply at the Justice Department’s report on private, for-profit prisons, and determine whether it opens any legal door for the state to revisit the contract’s terms and insert language that speaks to issues of safety, security and services.

The Legislature and the Ige administration must also work together to put a plan in place for replacement of OCCC going into the 2017 session. While we understand the sticker shock that kept Ige’s proposal from moving forward this year, it will not get any cheaper. Lawmakers must work out their sticking points by January and be prepared to pass an actual plan with funding in next year’s session.